Wednesday, December 14, 2011

I'm being a bit of a Scrooge this year. I still haven't put our tree up, I haven't made our Christmas cards, my advent calendar is no where near finished, and while I'm done shopping, I'm dreading the wrapping and making a trip to the post office.

I think I spent so much time cleaning and getting organized that I just don't want to make a mess...and Christmas decorations and wrapping paper make a mess!

I'll be spending the rest of today getting over it and getting stuff done!

Friday, December 9, 2011

We've had a lot going on here for the past seven days, so I decided to take a little break. My husband's family came into town, we had our 5th wedding anniversary, we completed round one of Christmas, and my husband turned the big 3-0! Little Man and I had cupcakes waiting on him when he got home!

I've been catching my breath for the past day or so and everything is slowly getting back to normal.

I'll be back on Monday with a regular post! Y'all have a good weekend!

Friday, December 2, 2011

I'm a bit late with this, but here's my little ornament tutorial that's hardly a tutorial!

Ok, so I started working on ornaments for my advent calendar. I had planned to try and do some DIY mercury glass based on this little tutorial by Martha. Well, my "plan" was really just an idea and I hadn't really looked into the cost of that Krylon mirror spray paint or the places that it was available. Turns out, most people have to get it from Amazon and it's about $11 a can...and it's a small can. (Some people have been able to find it at Wal-Mart and I've read that it's available at Hobby Lobby, but we don't have one of those).

I had some liquid silver leaf laying around, so I decided that instead of paying $11 and waiting a few days for the mirror paint to get to me (I'm impatient!), I'd try out the liquid leaf to see what happened. I followed the steps laid out by Martha and put a little water into my clear glass ornament, swished it around, and got all the excess out. Then I basically did the same thing with the liquid leaf. I let it sit upside down for a while to get all the drips out and then I just turned it over to let it dry.

The result is definitely not as shiny as the mirror paint, it's more of a gunmetal color, but I kind of like it. I also have some gold liquid leaf, but the lid had dried to the bottle (dangit!). Maybe my husband can get it off. I'm curious to see what the gold looks like.

I might still order a can of the mirror paint just to have on hand 'cause it's so cool, but the liquid leaf is not a bad alternative, plus it's only about $5. I bet a combination of the two would look great.